Chris Nowinski is co-founder of Sports Legacy Institute, a non-profit organization, and the author of “Head Games: Football's Concussion Crisis.”

He discussed what link, if any, can be drawn between Turley's cognitive issues and football.

“It's certainly fair to say we cannot pinpoint everyone's cognitive symptoms to brain trauma right now,” Nowinski said. “But we also know that, in our brain bank, we diagnosed at least 5 percent of former NFL players who have CTE pathology in their brain, and most of them were symptomatic. Even if Kyle's issues aren't 100 percent caused by sports brain trauma, there are other athletes at his position whose systems are caused by it.”

With time

Some children love art most.

Others love playing in the park.

For Turley's boy, there is no activity he prefers more, dad says, than sprinting to his father, wrapping him around the legs and tackling him to the ground.

The big thud, the high-pitched laughter — all of it has got Turley thinking. Archie Manning's sons take after their father. Howie Long's sons do, too.

“I am on a mission,” Turley said. “My mission is to fix this game for my son. … I think it's going to be inevitable that he wants to follow in his dad's footsteps.”

Turley isn't alone in his effort to make the game safer, as rule changes and USA Football coaches clinics and medical research are part of a focus to increase player safety, from youth to the NFL levels.

For most everyone, there seems a sense of urgency.

For Turley, it is personal.

“I've got as good of a chance as anybody of going down that road into Crazy Land or into Super Crazy Disease Land,” Turley said. “I've got every opportunity to probably be in the same boat in the future, and I don't know how far in the future. It's very, very disturbing, very frustrating, very stressful to deal with, especially having kids.”

He has chosen to donate his brain to medical research, a process that will reveal whether he has evidence of CTE, or chronic traumatic encephalopathy. He speaks on panels as a representative of retired NFL players. A country singer in Music City, he donates parts of his earnings to the Gridiron Greats Assistance Fund, a non-profit organization which provides medical-expense aid for retired NFL players in need.

As a player, Turley donated a game check to the non-profit and currently serves on its board of directors.

President Shannon Jordan described Turley as “very active” and “dedicated to this cause every single day.”

Less than three months after Seau's death last year, she said Gridiron Greats worked with the league to help launch the NFL Life Line, a 24-hour independent confidential support service for current and former players in crisis.

It's a good thing Turley was on the board.

He knew who to call.

Fortune and Pain

Turley calls it the “impulse.”

All the sudden, before he knows it, he feels it, and he is barely in control. He's got to get away. He's got to get away now. He hops in his car, and he drives off.